Books

BOOKS UEA Live: autumn 2021 Lineup

Jim moore book review

by louise collins

UEA Live is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a bang!

The festival is dedicated to celebrating creativity across all platforms and literary types, inspiring audiences to read and create until their hearts are content. This event celebrates authors from all origins in a brilliant, beautiful way, and this year is no different. UEA Live is kicked off on October 6, with New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff. Groff will be discussing her newest historical novel, Matrix, celebrating queerness, womanhood and female power. She will be in discussion with Sara Taylor, UEA alum and The Shore author.

On October 13, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Bimini Bon Boulash will be discussing Release the Beast: A Drag Queen’s Guide to Life, their debut book, with UEA Live Codirector and Creative Writing lecturer KR Moorhead. In this book, Boulash discusses the transformative life lessons of drag, as well as bringing forward the conversation of gendernonconformity.

October 20 hosts Jade LB, Lemara Lindsay-Prince, and Jyoti Patel who will be discussing #Merky Books, the Penguin Random House imprint curated by Stormzy. They will be talking about their iconic individual pieces, as well as the importance of imprints such as #Merky Books.

October 27 sees Elizabeth Day celebrating her newest psychological thriller, Magpie, which discusses motherhood, power, and jealousy. With titles such as journalist, podcast host, and bestselling author, Day will explore running themes across her work with Christie Watson, one of UEA’s Professors of Medical and Health Humanities.

On November 3, Leone Ross is set to discuss her writing journey with UEA’s Professor of Modern Literatures, Alison Donnell. Her journey includes her latest novel, This One Sky Day, and being the editor of the first Black British anthology of speculative fiction, which comes out in 2022.

The penultimate speaker is former Labour Leader Ed Miliband, who will be discussing the issues of inequality, housing, the climate crisis, and the need for change through his book Go Big: How To Fix Our World. On November 10, he will be proposing an interesting, and uplifting, set of solutions for the issues of today’s society. This will be chaired by Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory.

Closing UEA Live will be Malika Booker, on the 17 November. As the co-founder of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, she will discuss the upcoming anthology Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different with scriptwriter and poet Molly Naylor. This anthology celebrates a range of literature from a collective of writers and poets, across 20 years.

As plans stand, these events are to be held in person in the Lecture Theatres on campus. As well as listening to their talks, you will have the opportunity to ask any questions in a Live Q&A and buy the speaker’s books. You can buy tickets, or find out more information, via the UEA Live website: https://bit.ly/3CXdi82.

With a lineup of such incredible writers, I know for a fact I’ll be in the audience, hanging on to every word.

by Louise collins

For our last issue, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Moore about his book series, and I was desperate to read them.

Radulf the Aetherling sees a recently orphaned Rat Prince come to terms with his newfound Kingship. Alongside his close friend Runcorn, he must take his displaced subjects elsewhere, crossing dangerous rivers and meeting many foes along the way. The sequel, The Valley Witches, shows Runcorn and some new animal friends on an even more dangerous adventure in the hopes of finding a permanent home for their kingdom. With this, the witches come out in a proper battle of good vs evil.

One of the magical things about these books is how deeply centred they are in Norwich’s landscapes. We follow a trail of Norwich, visiting the Cathedral, UEA’s lake, and so much more. There are some wonderful discussions about ecosystems in these books, teaching children the importance of leaving ecosystems to their own natural hierarchies.

With Moore’s wonderful descriptions and his abundance of adjectives, I’m sure every child’s imagination will be whirring at full speed, picturing these protagonists in all their glory. Each character stands out brilliantly, having their own unique tone and bold personality – from a cowardly squirrel to a sarcastic owl, Moore’s books have it all.

The non-standard grammar – whilst potentially an issue for older readers – fits that of a child excitedly reading a story. With the addition of sarcastic characters, and a lot of humour, I can absolutely see children loving these books. And what’s not to love? Moore’s writing has magic, adventure, humour, and some wonderfully beautiful descriptions. They’re entertaining, and they teach kids about the world – there are so many facts about Norwich’s history and landscape, that children truly get the best of both worlds with these novels.

The Fine Line Between Reading for Pleasure and Reading for Education

By chloe thompsonhomeas

I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to find myself picking up Homer’s The Odyssey as I do some light reading by the pool, sipping on a cocktail. Instead, I enjoy the light-hearted fiction from authors such as Sally Rooney or Sophie Kinsella as I am transported into a land of dreamy romance and page turning plots.

The balancing act between reading for education and reading for pleasure has always been a difficult one to get right. Unfortunately, not every book worm wants to pick up their current go-to read after sieving through 600 pages of academic notes which leave us with a scramble of words spinning around our heads at 100mph. Usually a three-hour nap sounds more inviting than a chapter or two of whatever book TikTok is recommending that month. But do not fret, there are a few simple solutions to prevent the balancing act from collapsing completely.

Doesn’t the thought of curling up in an overpriced blanket from TK Maxx, next to the window as it rains, with a book in one hand and a coffee in the other sound heavenly? Reading is always so much more enjoyable if the location looks straight out of a Tumblr blog post. Even if the weather forecast isn’t working in your favour or the blanket is slightly out of the monthly spending budget, snuggling in bed with a candle, cuppa and book also does the trick. It is surprising how much a cosy location can drag you out of a reading slump.

Alternatively, to the rain, the long summer break from university is a great time to catch up on all sorts of reading. Consider using this time to pick up books which you grimaced at when you were in the full swing of reading for your degree. Treat yourself to a tan and cocktail as you flick through your most anticipated summer reads.

Surrounding yourself with people who love reading as much as you is also a great motivator to read for fun. Joining a book club with friends, family or strangers would help keep you on track to read something other than compulsory university reading. There is nothing quite as enjoyable as some friendly competition to finish a book first!

Avoid feeling guilty about not reading as much as you would usually do. If all you can stomach that week is set reading for your degree, then at least you are still reading something! There will be plenty of time to crack on with some leisurely reading of War and Peace when you are old, frail and retired so try not to beat yourself up too much.

It is inevitable the juggling act of reading for pleasure and education won’t always go swimmingly. Sometimes it is vital to put reading about mystical creatures, hunky millionaire men and Moby Dick on the backburner and concentrate on that compulsory reading which has been piling up. But fear not! This is only temporary!

Alice in the Pandemic: Why Now is the Time to Re-Read Lewis Carroll’s Classic

by liz lane

As the Royal Mint releases new Wonderland-inspired coins, Alice-themed tea rooms open across the USA, and the V&A reveals its latest rabbit-hole exhibition, it’s time to ask why Wonderland continues to beguile a world under lockdown? Is it our desire to tumble down a rabbit hole into a world which promises escapism?

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the fictional world appears wonderfully devoid of consequences. Alice plummets from great heights, near-drowns in tears and yet somehow manages to avoid injury. When the Queen of Hearts barks vehement threats of executions, the Gryphon reassures Alice: ‘It’s all her fancy, that: they never executes nobody, you know.’ Nobody dies in Wonderland, Carroll reveals, and Alice can roam its world in peace, free from the threat of danger.

In Wonderland, where the White Rabbit and Mad Hatter are dreadfully conscious of time, fretting ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ and warning ‘If you knew Time as well as I do…you wouldn’t talk about wasting it’, Alice appears blissfully immune to the passage of time. Time is the thing Alice must ‘beat…when learn[ing] music’, it’s not a pressure as it is for the other characters. Perhaps the freedom Alice experiences contributes to the joy of reading the book. We can escape to a world that has all the consequences of a dream and simply leave, as Alice does, when it becomes too strange.

Yet, the Alice books are not always joyful affairs. Through the Looking-Glass, particularly, demonstrates Alice’s increasing lack of control. The sequel has Carroll’s characters move like pieces on a chessboard and Alice is the ‘Pawn’ of the game. She rushes through the story, trying to reach ‘the Eighth Square before it gets dark!’ Humpty Dumpty informs her she’s already ‘too late’, switching the script and making Alice the one who struggles to keep up with time. Where, in the first book, Alice experiences relative freedom, in the second, she’s under pressure and in a struggle for her own autonomy.

So, is there something about Alice, in this time particularly, that warrants a re-read of Carroll’s classics?

In this pandemic existence, people are experiencing both the pressure of restrictions and the desire for relative freedom. We both seek the autonomy of Alice roaming dream-like in Wonderland, and feel the pressure she experienced in Through the Looking-Glass. The Alice books tap into the disorienting feelings of pandemic-living: the unusual dreams, the confusions surrounding time, the desire for escape, and the constant anxiety. Carroll presents an anxious, surreal existence, caught between a keen desire for freedom and a fear of losing control. The threat of death, and the worry of how to grow up in such a world, permeate the story of a child discovering a strange new reality.

The Alice books can be turned to as a piece of escapism, a distraction from the pressure and restrictions of the now. Alternatively, they could be viewed as a warped lens into our own world in which Carroll is one of few authors willing to admit just how strange and bewildering our existence can be.

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